Wednesday 2 April: The decline of British steelmaking is a disaster for national security

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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449 thoughts on “Wednesday 2 April: The decline of British steelmaking is a disaster for national security”

  1. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,383 6/6

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    2. Joking aside, Quality Street took a massive dip in 'quality' when Nestlé took over Mackintoshes.

      In the same way that Dairy Box, Black Magic and Jelly became inedible after their take-over of Rowntree's.

      1. It happenes to so much we avoid so many items we have less choice than ever.

      2. We bought a box of Black Magic and a Box of Terry's All Gold when we were in England just before Christmas a few years ago. It seemed that the chocolates were neither as good nor as big as they used to be.

  5. Good morning all.
    Another beautiful morning but still a bit chilly at 4°C.

    A trip to Derby to drop off t'Lad's engineering bits I picked up over the past two weeks. I've a few things to take out the van before I go.

  6. Morning all,

    Filled up MOH's ICE car yesterday with E5 giving the Berlingo 47 mpg and an over 500 mile range.

    There waa so many people filling up yesterday that you would have thought it was April Fuel's Day.

      1. I couldn’t see how much the tank was taking – I fillled from the other side to pump and the car windows were too tinted to see the pump.

        1. I always record my mileage and fuel used.
          Though I do with diesel would not froth up like it does!

          1. I gave up on diesel because the DPF filled up and triggered the engine warning light. There were numerous ways of fixing it but they were either very dangerous, might not work or not worth the expense.

            I prefer electricity because there is no startup overhead when just moving the EV out of the garage. For our car with petrol there is the decision between E5 and E10 both of which are printed on the fuel filler cap. The Puretech 1.2 engine was designed when E5 was the universal unleaded so I have suggested avoiding E10 with its higher tendency to dissolve rubber, bigger water solubility, low combustion efficiency and lower octane level should be avoided in such a high compression ratio engine.

  7. The Best April Fool’s Jokes

    This year April Fool’s Day coincided with Labour’s ‘Awful April’ bill hikes. Sadly that was not a joke…

    Though there are some strong contenders for who gave the best April Fool’s joke. The Adam Smith Institute might take the gold medal for bringing socialist Gary Stevenson onto its team of fellows:
    https://twitter.com/ASI/status/1906979082337648677?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1906979082337648677%7Ctwgr%5E0fc843f53822cc98f4d86058860602ddc898bafb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Forder-order.com%2F
    Nigel Farage got a tattoo:
    https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1907024118089724029?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1907024118089724029%7Ctwgr%5E0fc843f53822cc98f4d86058860602ddc898bafb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Forder-order.com%2F
    The Free Speech Union left X:
    https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion/status/1906962756915392714?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1906962756915392714%7Ctwgr%5E0fc843f53822cc98f4d86058860602ddc898bafb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Forder-order.com%2F
    Rayner claimed her Employment Rights Bill would boost growth. Chortles all round…

    The BBC provided a good one on March 31:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3db745e0ea4cf94f0a18300c26fb470014d12e5089daf99dcdd2ac7d992d9e7f.png
    ******************************************

    BannyFatter
    11h
    Anyone notice the difference between the jesting of the Adam Smith Institute + Nigel Farage and those at the BBC?
    Those on the right have been light hearted, self deprecating and engaging, where as lefties at the BBC could not help but be mean spirited, vexatious, puerile, and unpleasant.

    ExFish
    14h
    The Marine Le Pen-is piece is the BBC's latest version of their so funny, hysterical, repeated garbled introductions of Jeremy Hunt. Needless to say, the Today Programme, never, ever made the same 'mistake' when introducing Labour's Tristram Hunt.
    The 'mistake' is deliberate and another example of the corruption and rot at the heart of the BBC.

    John D
    13h
    This is no 1st April jest, its all over France
    Quote- Marine Le Pen:

    Pledged to immediately begin Mass Deportations.

    Pledged to exit NATO and hold a Referendum on leaving EU.

    She opposed Ursula von der Leyen’s EU Presidency. – Called for Peace in Ukraine.

    Now do you understand why they have banned her from becoming President?

    end of quote

    She and her millions of followers are not going away
    Even Trumps passed a comment

      1. Royal tattoos
        King Harold II of England had a number of tattoos. After his death at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, his tattoos were used to identify his body.

        Many other royals throughout history have been tattooed. In 1862 Albert, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm on a visit to the Holy Land. When his sons, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York (later King George V) visited Japan in 1882 they both had dragons tattooed on their arms.

        Among the Russian royal family, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Nicholas II all bore tattoos.

        1. Some members of royal families – especially those who married into them – are not exactly from the top drawer.

          I don't have an inkling as to whether or not the Duchess of Sussex has an 'inking'.

        2. Colchester used to have a tattoo. I believe that Edinburgh still has one. Lol.

      2. Judy Dench quipped that she had a tattoo of Weinstein on her rear …. unfortunately, it was before the dirty deeds of Weinstein became public knowledge.

  8. Phew!
    As t'Lad want me to go and pick some bits up from Longeaton, I've had to partially de-kit the van as it's still got my camping gear in it!
    And yes, it is a bit nippy out there!

    2. Special educational needs and disability (SEND) A child or young person has special educational needs and disabilities if they have a learning difficulty and/or a disability that means they need special health and education support, we shorten this to SEND.

        1. Ah. I missed that as we were out for the evening. Live opera screening at our local cinema. Super Turandot.

  15. 'Morning All
    Midweek Medley
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa3f5fe2aaf0b579967daf195202a29fa63fa2b86cbf560afae49e59f6c1e849.jpg
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    1. Yo and God Moaning all from a sunny C d S

      My sister in law died last year of a Pulmonary Embolism, she was in her early 60's

    2. Where do those covid disease spike figures come from? I'm extremely sceptical of their veracity.

      1. Covid vaccines caused huge spike in medical conditions? No, bad US military data exploited by ‘little-known’ attorney

        Published on 22 September 2022

        IN SHORT: A poorly maintained US military database under-reported medical conditions in its forces in the five years before Covid vaccines were rolled out. When correct numbers were recorded, they seemed to indicate a huge increase. But this is just bad data. These massive post-vaccine “spikes” don’t occur anywhere else in the US, or the world.

        “We did it! We finally beat Covid!” reads the sarcastic header of a graphic posted on the public Facebook group page “South Africans Against the Nwo” in August 2022.

        NWO is short for New World Order, a common theme in harmful and often antisemitic conspiracy theories.

        The graphic includes a screenshot of a tweet that lists alarming “spikes” in medical conditions:

        279% spike in Miscarriages
        487% spike in Breast Cancer
        551% spike in Guillain-Barre syndrome
        269% spike in Myocardial Infarction
        468% spike in Pulmonary Embolism
        The graphic ends with: “This is what success looks like.”

        The original tweet, from the Twitter account of a person who claims to be a medical doctor, appears to have been deleted. But the list is circulating elsewhere on Twitter, as seen here, here and here.

        And it’s clear that Covid vaccines are blamed for the claimed massive spikes.

        The list has also appeared on Instagram, on blogs and on websites. Some list even more spikes in what are called “vaccine injuries”.

        Others include the odd line item of “1048% SPIKE in the Nervous System”, which doesn’t make sense. (The nervous system is simply a part of the human body. It can’t spike. Saying “1048% SPIKE in Stomach” would be just as puzzling.)

        The list is wrong.

        It doesn’t show the global side-effects of Covid vaccines, which have been safely rolled out across the world.

        The percentages are calculated from a single dodgy US defence department database of medical conditions among that country’s military.

        The US military database – the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, or DMED – was poorly maintained. A glitch in its system under-reported medical conditions in military personnel in the five years from 2016 to 2020. In 2021, as the US defence department started vaccinating its staff, their medical conditions were accurately recorded on the database.

        But this allowed conspiracy theorists to claim the apparently astonishing spikes. The huge increases in medical conditions were calculated from an incorrect low base.

        https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/meta-programme-fact-checks/covid-vaccines-caused-huge-spike-medical-conditions-no-bad

          1. It makes little sense to draw conclusions about a small dataset, a corrupted one, when much larger studies cannot find the same spike. Unfortunately, rogue information, once put into the public domain, is leapt upon with alacrity and relish in order to sustain a belief that THEY are out to get you. Hence the ceaseless repetition of rogue and discredited claims, all because someone few have heard of wants to make waves and attract attention by feeding agitated minds with anything that supports a suspicion we're being manipulated and deceived by dark, sinister powers.

          4. Sense Of Humour Failure?

            My pupils soon learnt that I shouldn't be taken too seriously.

          6. From memory he replaced the Michael Medwin character, just as Ted Lune replaced the gormless Bernard Bresslaw one.

      1. Reminds me of the girl in the high kicking dance group: She certainly may, may-may!

    5. Rik !

      It only scored 53% on Rotten Tomatoes but i'm really enjoying it.

      Valerian and the city of a thousand planets. Made me burst out laughing more than once.

      I guess it scored low because of the Gen Z audience.

  16. As if Ed hasn't enough to worry about..

    SCMP reports that China has about 400 million e-bikes & about half as many dumped all over the place.
    Problemo: Once lithium gets below the water table.. it's gameover.
    The South China Morning Post reported on March 5 that pregnant women and infants in Beijing have abnormally high lithium concentrations, which affects all important organs of the human body, especially the kidneys.

  17. As if Ed hasn't enough to worry about..

    SCMP reports that China has about 400 million e-bikes & about half as many dumped all over the place.
    Problemo: Once lithium gets below the water table.. it's gameover.
    The South China Morning Post reported on March 5 that pregnant women and infants in Beijing have abnormally high lithium concentrations, which affects all important organs of the human body, especially the kidneys.

  18. GGood Morning Nottlers, 6°C and rising, light winds and clear skies. I see Marine le Pen has been removed from the board, I expect her deputy/replacement will gather a surge in voting. The Soyatollah Starmer doesn't need to employ such tactics against Bad Enoch or Eid Davey, they're basically following the same WEF route map.

  19. Bugger!
    A double 0 from ERNIE this month.

    And I'm off to t'Lads, back in a few hours!
    TTFN

        1. as I've said before Grizz – buy another one and double your chances 😂

    1. In short, Rosalind has no illusions about Stoma's Blighty.
      Which is continuing a trend started under a supposedly "Conservative" government.

  21. TREVOR LOCK [born April 14 1939, died March 30 2025]

    Unassuming policeman awarded the George Medal for his bravery in the Iranian Embassy siege
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13b528d8ae09b67606b48017022263e5cd02ab96fd766adff503e0be1b8dad86.png PC Lock shouts down to the police below from the embassy balcony

    TREVOR LOCK, who has died aged 85, was the police constable taken hostage by terrorists during the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980; for his bravery he was awarded the George Medal, although many in the force felt that his six days of sustained courage merited the highest award of all.

    Lock was born in Gants Hill on April 14 1939 and educated locally. Later described in the 1980 Hamlyn publication SIEGE! as “one of the solid, dependable and unambitious men on whom the Metropolitan Police relies”, he joined the force in 1965 and was posted to Dagenham police station. He served there for 15 years as a beat constable before volunteering for duty with the Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG), which is responsible for guarding the premises of diplomatic missions in central London.

    It was on Wednesday April 30 1980, while still on six months’ probation with the DPG, that Lock was assigned to guard the Iranian Embassy at Prince’s Gate, off Knightsbridge, regarded at the time as one of the less vulnerable targets for terrorism in the capital. Having taken advantage of the door-keeper’s offer of a cup of coffee, Lock was actually inside the front entrance of the embassy when six armed men burst in and overpowered him. Lock’s commanding officer, Chief Superintendent Roger Bromley, head of the DPG, later said that that cup of coffee undoubtedly saved Lock’s life, for the chief superintendent was well aware that if Lock had been at his post and had drawn his pistol, he would have been shot down in cold blood.

    The terrorists, the self-styled Group of the Martyr Muhyiddin al-nassr, whose object was to secure the release of political prisoners in Iran by their actions, seized the embassy and took hostage the 26 persons who were there at the time. Apart from Lock, the hostages included two BBC men, Simeon Harris, a sound recordist, and Chris Cramer, a news organiser, who were in the embassy applying for visas to go to Iran, and the embassy’s British chauffeur, Ron Morris.

    Throughout the six days of the siege, Lock managed to keep his service revolver secreted, and acted as a calming influence on the volatile terrorists and a pillar of strength to the agitated hostages. Properly dressed at all times, he presented to them, and subsequently to the world at large through the medium of television, the image of the archetypal London policeman in the mould of the fictional Dixon of Dock Green.
    At one stage, when technicians were placing listening devices in the wall of the embassy, the leader of the terrorists became suspicious of noises. He suggested to Lock that police were trying to break in and ordered him to investigate.

    With superb theatrical mime, Lock took a plug from a wall-socket and listened. Then he took up the carpet and pointed to a hole in the floorboards that ran beneath the skirting. “This building is over a hundred years old,” he said. “I expect it’s mice.” Everybody laughed, including the terrorists, and calm was restored.

    During the six days, five hostages were released by the terrorists, but a violent resolution to the siege became inevitable when they murdered Abbas Lavasani, the press attaché at the embassy, and left his body on the steps of the mission with a promise to murder further hostages at the rate of one every 30 minutes. A detachment of the Special Air Service, which had been standing by at Duke of York’s barracks, was called in by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to resolve the impasse. The assault by the SAS, captured on television as it happened and broadcast around the world, began when black-uniformed figures abseiled down to the first-floor balcony from the roof of the embassy while others effected an entry at the rear.

    As the first SAS man entered the building, PC Lock grappled with the leader of the terrorists, his action undoubtedly saving the soldier’s life. The SAS man shouted to Lock to stand away and promptly shot the leader dead. Four further terrorists were killed by the SAS and the sixth taken prisoner. Within 11 minutes the attack was over. While it was going on, one Iranian diplomat was shot dead by the terrorists and another wounded, but the remaining 19 hostages were released unharmed.

    Lock was subjected to the attentions of the world’s press, his first interview taking place at Scotland Yard in the presence of the Commissioner,
    Sir David Mcnee – who, having told viewers that they had heard of courage, invited them “now to look upon it”.
    Lock, at times bemused by all the attention, appeared as solid and reliable as he must have been during the siege itself, and captivated the nation by his very ordinariness. To the world at large he was the genuine London bobby, living up to all the impossible expectations of a fickle public.
    His fluency in the face of television cameras belied his true feelings, for Lock was a shy man, and said on more than one occasion that he was looking forward to getting back to work.

    He was totally unprepared for the adulation and praise heaped upon him Almost immediately he was made a freeman of the City of London, but had to seek an advance from the Commissioner to buy a suit for the ceremony, never having owned one before.
    Interviews with television and press followed in abundance, but throughout, Lock, with typical self-effacing phlegm, played down his own courage, more or less dismissing his actions as part of his job. Not unnaturally, he was somewhat nervous about resuming duties with the DPG, and a post was found for him as an observer with the police helicopter unit. While waiting for this posting to take effect, Lock’s award of the George Medal was announced, and his fellow officers in the DPG, who in common with all policemen will allow a colleague to be a hero for a day but no longer, marked the occasion with a cartoon. Appearing anonymously on the DPG noticeboard, it depicted Lock in a helicopter with a distinct list to port. The caption was: “You’re not supposed to wear it up here, Trev!”

    Although police regulations allow the Commissioner to promote, out of turn, any officer who has displayed exceptional qualities, there is a perverse impediment: the officer must have passed the qualifying promotion examination. Despite the outstanding leadership displayed by Lock during those six days, he was never able to pass that examination and joined the M11 motorway control unit, retiring from the force in 1992.
    Following the death of his first wife in 1971, Trevor Lock married a nurse and former policewoman, Doreen, who died in 2024; he had three children with each wife.

    This is the high standard of police officer that we used to expect in the UK. This obituary should be compulsive reading for everyone involved in today's pathetic excuse for a police 'service'.

    1. And, for balance, this is what the modern-day police 'service' have transmogrified into.

      Trump is right – Starmer’s Britain has turned into a chilling police state

      The Daily Telegraph 2 Apr 2025 Allison Pearson
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6db8114b5050e7cc78eeae64c0697f603e48fe598f12e5196eec8c086e9836d4.png Shattering: police officers take part in a ‘drugs-raidstyle’ operation at the home of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine

      On reflection, I have decided we should just give up and cancel April Fool’s Day. Pranks are an endangered species in the spring of 2025. There’s far too much competition from real life.

      Let’s try a little test, folks. Which of these is an April Fool?Four-year-old suspended from nursery for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity” at an age when most small boys still happily identify as a tractor. Highly respected professor denounced and cast out by her university for stating biological facts. A family on horseback allegedly menaced by two men and the wife later summoned to the police station for describing the pair who terrified them as “effing pikeys”. A grandmother visited by plainclothes policemen because she posted a private message criticising a Labour councillor. A builder in Bedfordshire gets a police record for racial hatred after whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune at his neighbours.

      Surely, I hear you wail, that last one can’t be true? Amazing to report, but all of them happened. No wonder that when I woke up today, I sleepily assumed the story that Nestlé is renaming Quality Street “E-Quality Street” to mark five years since George Floyd’s death was yet another craven corporate capitulation to identity politics. Yes, I’d been had – more fool me – but it’s easy to be deceived when so much of our national life has turned into a sinister joke.

      Only it gets harder to laugh, I find, when you learn that our most valuable ally, the United States, is so “concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom” that our Prime Minister’s hopes of avoiding tariffs are said to have been kiboshed by the woke idiocy championed by our lower-sixthform Government. Soft authoritarianism and the infiltration of a warped, anti-white, anti-straight, anti-Christian, anti-democratic creed of “protected characteristics” into British institutions may well end up costing this beleaguered nation billions of pounds. Literally billions – thanks, Labour!

      Of course, this could yet prove to be Trump putting on a hard-man display for his domestic audience, but it’s not difficult to understand why the current American administration views the spread of Orwellian non-crime crimes in the UK with such disbelief and hostility. I, too, despise what we have become.You don’t have to search hard for the latest insane examples of police overreach or Marxist social engineering. Maxie Allen, a producer for Times Radio, and his partner, Rosalind Levine, must have found it surreal when they opened the door of their Borehamwood home to find six police officers standing there. This quintessentially liberal, middleclass couple were arrested in front of their distraught young daughter and taken to the police station, where they were kept in separate cells for eight hours for… for what exactly? For upsetting the powersthat-be at their elder daughter’s primary school by complaining when an interim head teacher was appointed without proper accountability. Maxie and Rosalind sent an awful lot of disgruntled emails and shared some spicy, aggrieved comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group. Nothing you wouldn’t find in any similar group around the country. They were banned from school premises and were unable to supervise their epileptic daughter’s medication.

      Questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property, they had literally done nothing illegal. After a five-week investigation – into what exactly? – the police concluded there should be no further action. It should never have been a matter for the police at all – as Jonathan Ash-Edwards, the police and crime commissioner for Hertfordshire, acknowledged at the weekend – let alone the cue for a terrifying, drugs-raid-style operation by multiple officers.

      Ironically, Ms Levine had predicted her own fate after she and her partner were sent a warning letter. In a WhatsApp group, she quipped, “Can you imagine what the ‘action’ is? Hello, 999, one of the school mums said something mean about me in a school mum WhatsApp group. Please can you arrest them?”

      In an even more sinister development, a Hertfordshire county councillor, Michelle Vince, was warned by police that she could be investigated if she continued to help the parents. Increasingly, senior officers’ values are not our values, their loyalty is not to us
      Vince rightly said the case raised “serious questions about police taking away democratic rights” from elected representatives. Who do the police think they are?

      Invariably, these stories end up following the same depressing pattern. There is a squall of media indignation from people like me, a police force may admit things could have been handled better while insisting it was the correct procedure to arrest X (like hell it was). A few politicians will say the case raises serious questions about what the police are actually policing, adding that forces should focus on the things that really matter to voters. Given sufficient noise, a senior copper will issue a blandly reassuring statement: “My priorities are to fight crime… blah, blah, blah.”

      And then it’s straight back to policing tweets and private behaviour, arresting journalists at a Just Stop Oil protest and throwing them in a cell (because they’re the problem, obviously) and generally advancing a progressive “social justice” agenda that no one voted for. Plod has catastrophically lost the plot, I’m afraid. As dire clear-up rates reveal, police have largely forgotten that their job is to enforce the law against crimes that have taken place. Not to persecute people for imaginary crimes which might take place.
      So, let’s take a closer look at the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Police Race Action Plan. This plan’s main theme is that the police must be “actively anti-racist” to address so-called disparities in the criminal justice system. Every chief constable in the country is signed up to this divisive nonsense and is rolling out training courses for officers, who are told they do not have to treat ethnic minorities the same as other members of the public. Arrest rates should be “equalised” between groups, even when one group is, for instance, committing considerably more machete crime or female genital mutilation than another. I can’t think why, can you?

      The College of Policing, a quango employing 600 people and costing the taxpayer £45million a year, is responsible for this ideologically motivated, anti-British madness. The college drives hate law and thought policing into tactical operations through targets, training and indoctrination; a stated objective of its Leadership Programme is “creating a culture of inclusion and diversity”. As one senior officer explained: “Hate crime is a growth industry because it helps reinforce the College of Policing’s diversity ideology. The more hate crime they record, the better they can show there is a problem in society, which justifies them ignoring traditional crime.”

      This is exactly the same arrogant mindset we find at the Sentencing Council, another powerful quango which just narrowly failed to destroy equality before the law with the introduction of special consideration by judges for certain “protected characteristics”. The Government, and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, have tried to take credit for getting the council to stand down with the threat of emergency legislation. Don’t believe it, Labour loves that stuff. Full credit belongs to Robert Jenrick, whose promise of an injunction at the final hour saved the UK from this pernicious two-tier sentencing. The shadow justice secretary is doing his best to stick up for the majority of British people, but the police are marching to a different drummer. Increasingly, their values are not our values, their loyalty is not to us.
      We cannot put up with this outrageous abuse of police power much longer. Too many people like Mr Allen and Ms Levine have suffered unforgivable, shattering ordeals at the hands of their constabulary. Common sense must be restored to policing. The abolition of the College of Policing must wait for the next government, but, for now, politicians should scrutinise their edicts and ask: “How do they serve the public interest?” I hear that there may be a misfeasance in public office claim brought against senior officers of Hertfordshire Police. Good. If Mr Allen and Ms Levine wish to pursue one, many of us would gladly help crowdfund them.

      It should be a source of national shame that the United States is using such cases as a bargaining tool against this country. What on earth have we become? Understandably, many will complain about US interference in our democracy, but free speech is under threat as never before in Starmer’s Stasi Britain. If the Prime Minister is forced to tell police to lay off the thought crimes to save billions in tariffs, what a remarkable deal that would be

      I’m just looking forward to the time when, once again, sanity is restored, police solve crimes and every day is not April Fool’s Day.

      2. The whole essence of fairness in the justice system is that everyone is equal under the law. When you have BAMEs getting special treatment just because they are BAME, that undermines the whole lot.

    2. Where on the 1-10 scale would you place your avatar today? You had a very respectable one a couple of days ago and you looked quite good!

      1. Good morning, Rastus. I reckon that Grizzly's avatar for today is meant to suggest that he was one of the black balaclava-clad SAS personnel who abseiled down into the the Iranian embassy. In reality, apart from normal police duties, Grizzly's only other activities were taking part in Morris dancing during the miners' strikes. Lol.

        1. I doubt he would have found space on the balcony given the number of other people who seem to have been there in addition to the real lot!

      2. That's my "Don't Mess" avatar, Rastus.

        I deployed the manic stare to good effect during the miners' strike. They could dish it out, but they didn't like it up 'em!🤣

        1. In 2009 I was running a training course for new staff……… one of the trainees was an ex-policeman who had been deployed on the front lines during the miners' strike. Another was an ex-miner……… they didn't quite come to blows but it was close.

          1. Coming from mining stock and living in an area with lots of miners there was naturaally, at times, a lot of tension. However, I was chosen to police a village in which just one miner was working but no one dare touch him because he was a big powerful chap. The wimpish striking miners sent out their wives and children to shout and scream abuse at him as he went to work each day. Initially there was a lot of resentment at the presence of me and my five colleagues who worked a shift system, just two of us on duty at any time. Eventually the villagers came to accept and even respect us since they needed someone to report crimes — of which they were the victim — to. On one picket line there was a group of miners whom I knew from school. When they saw me they started chanting my name and it was impossible — for my colleagues and me — to stifle a smile. The only groupings that gave me any grief were the flying pickets (from elsewhere) and the Metropolitan police (also from elsewhere) who, at times acted worse than the flying pickets. Having said that, we enjoyed excellent relations with members of other visiting supporting forces, especially the Devon & Cornwall Police and the City of London Police.

    5. That brought me to tears. And compare to plod now, sending 6 men to arrest parents on a WhatsApp chat. Unbelievable.

    6. The George Medal is the highest award for bravery not under fire in a military situation. It's the highest civilian bravery award.

          1. According to Wikipedia, the GC and GM may be awarded to the same categories of people,
            "The GC, which may be awarded posthumously, is granted in recognition of:
            acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.
            The award is for civilians but also for military personnel whose actions would not normally be eligible to receive military awards, such as gallantry not in the face of the enemy."

            the GM: "The medal is granted in recognition of "acts of great bravery"" "The medal is primarily a civilian award, but it may be awarded to military personnel for gallant conduct that is not in the face of the enemy." So a lower requirement of bravery for the GM compared to the GC.

          2. From Encyclopædia Britannica:

            George Cross, a British civilian and military decoration, instituted in 1940 by King George VI for “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.” The award, which can be conferred posthumously, is usually given to civilians, although it can be bestowed on military personnel for acts for which military decorations are not usually awarded. The George Cross superseded the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Gallantry (commonly known as the Empire Gallantry Medal).

            Recipients of this award may add G.C. after their names; the cross ranks second only to the Victoria Cross (the highest British military decoration). The cross is silver, with one side depicting St. George slaying the dragon and with the inscription “For Gallantry;” the other side gives the recipient’s name and the date of the award.

            The George Medal, instituted at the same time as the George Cross, is analogous to it but is awarded for services not quite so outstanding as those which merit the George Cross. Recipients of this medal can add G.M. after their names. The medal is silver; one side has the effigy of the reigning British monarch, and the other side has St. George and the dragon with the inscription “The George Medal.”

  22. Russia to be placed on Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. 2 April 2025.

    Russia is to be put on the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), meaning anyone working for the Russian state in the UK will need to declare what they are doing or risk jail, the government announced today.

    Introduced under the National Security Act 2023, FIRS is a tool to help protect our democracy, economy and society from covert, deceptive or otherwise harmful activities against UK interests. The enhanced tier has been specifically designed to shed light on activities directed by particular foreign powers which pose a threat to the safety or interests of the UK.

    So if the Russians were plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament they would tell us? This is one of those measures beloved of politicians. It sounds really impressive and makes no difference to anything whatsoever. The Russians will register their legitimate operations (which everyone knows about anyway) and if they have anything underhanded in mind will carry on as before.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/russia-to-be-placed-on-foreign-influence-registration-scheme

    1. The Russians will register their legitimate operations (which everyone knows about anyway)
      As, of course, will the UK.

      and if they have anything underhanded in mind will carry on as before.
      As, of course, will MI6.

    2. Oh for goodness sake. The hard Left are constantly lying to us. Russia is far more honest than raynor, and she's a liar. Reeves is a crook and fantasist, the 'I'm a solicitor' should be facing criminal charges.

      Starmer is a crook – the Russians aren't the problem. The state is.

  23. Good morning, all. Bright but chilly start here in N Essex.

    This is dated yesterday but it's no joke for many people who have seen many recent price rises, with more in the pipeline, and are consequently struggling to make ends meet.

    Gaslighting, outright lying, whatever, this minister's spiel is disgraceful.

    https://x.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1906962505701740722

    1. Morning Korky. We have entered Fantasy Land. The Truth has been abolished.

        1. And, as with Orwell, we know the BBC is lying. Odd that before there were multiple ways of getting information the Al Beeb didn't need 'fact checkers'. Now it does – and they're lying. Facebook admitted they were just censors as well.

          The guardian stopped posting on twitter as soon as community notes – little additions asking questions or providing more detail – came in. They didn't like their propaganda being undermined with annoyances like 'the truth'.

      2. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

    2. How, liar? How are living standards rising? Utter, utter liar.

      The min wage has risen, yes, but that's just a tax on jobs. You're rigging the price of labour. It hikes and then you swipe more in tax. So stop, sodding, lying!

      Freezing a tax – i.e, not increasing it – is not a tax cut. It doesn't make anything easier because inflation from VED destroys any saving.

      1. It's like when Gordon Brown trumpeted a "tax cut" and all he'd done is remove the 20% band so everybody, including the low paid, now paid 30%. Labournomics.

  25. As if Ed hasn't enough to worry about.. (Part II).

    Elon Musk
    As I said a few years ago, the AI scaling constraint will move from chips to voltage transformers to electricity generation.

    1. I said a while back that eventually data companies would look to provide their own power sources. They'd then sell that power cheaply back to the users because the data has more value to them.

      A Lefty chum was horrified at this. He said : but then they'd not have to pay the climate change levies! People could choose what energy to use and it'd be the cheapest, and what would happen to windmills without subsidy from bills?

      I said 'Now you're getting it! Welcome to markets 101!'

  26. Oh Lord.. Is this what it's all about?

    As we see so many cloak and dagger ops run thru Pakistan (US State Dept coup of Imran Khan, London mass import of Pakistanis, Ryan Routh Pakistan network, USAID laundering money thru Pakistani front orgs), it's instructive to know Pakistan may soon have 4th most oil in the world

  27. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sunny today but a tad chilly.
    Existing Steel manufacturing should always be a necessary function In any Western country. But I feel ours is sliding down hill as its been managed by our useless destructive political morons.
    Instead of the royals handing out rewards perhaps they should have used the sword in a more appropriately manner.

  28. Good morning , sunshine but cold 7c.

    Police hunt 22 men after large-scale fight.

    19 March 2025
    Police have released images of 22 men they want to trace after a large-scale fight in Sheffield.

    The disorder took place on Woodbourn Road on 25 May last year, South Yorkshire Police said.

    A force spokesperson said officers believed it involved two groups from the Eritrean community with opposing political views. Members of the Eritrean community with opposing political views are believed to have clashed

    Eighteen people have so far been charged with offences including violent disorder, possession of an offensive weapon and wounding, they added.

    A group of about 200 people gathered at the Pakistan Muslim Centre, where violence involving weapons erupted both inside and outside the centre and on the surrounding streets.

    The centre was damaged along with vehicles parked nearby.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70e72gk78po?fbclid=IwY2xjawJZzDtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWdRihzHpAi_JmxnSMT0Zjk9o17TjYwxbwFYop0bG_WXiAaguSGUcxiNJg_aem_O_owivMHCcdFGPlX3a1AuQ

    1. Det Insp Lee Wilson said the force's investigation had been "moving at pace".

      Given this took place in May last year, would that be the pace of a snail?

      2. Certainly a pace slow enough to ensure that hurty words on twitter from decent white folk about the state were punished first.

    2. Every electron of the upload must have pained the BBC to tears.. displaying images of their beloved & exuberant Eritrean community.

    3. I hope there's a rational explanation, perhaps an ordinary police procedural one, for waiting nearly 10 months before issuing images of suspects to the public.

    5. Hang the swine! Stop pandering to them, stop wanting to talk to them, just hang them. Get rid of the diversity and just about every problem this country has disappears. Stop fiddling about with career criminals and solve the problem.

  29. Good morning. Just had a phone call from a concerned GP. Thanked her for her support and heard hesitancy in her reply but honestly I do appreciate her at least communicating and discussing the issues.

        1. It's one place I never visited and never intend to. Spaghetti junction is the nearest I've been. OH went there years ago to get a visa from the Indian Embassy but they were closed for an Indian public holiday – so he had to try again a week later. Must have been 2004.

    2. I would be interested in Rupert Lowe’s results re the question of how many homes are exempt from council tax because they have a designated “prayer room”. I suspect Birmingham has a lot taking advantage of this scam.

    3. Ignoring the their/there misery, the woke idiocy of try to compare two types of jobs just because one is done by a man and another by a woman is stupid.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/02/blame-birmingham-absurd-equal-pay-bill-waste-fiasco/

      Council salaries are completely unrealistic. Notably they started to soar just as council services collapsed. They have a force backed, fixed income. They've no product, no customers, no stock, no marketing. They just have people – expensive people. They can't even manage that. Therefore how, in all reason; can they justify these 6 figure salaries?

    2. Part of their planned destruction of the NHS. But this has been happening for several years.

  32. Swirls in to say good morning, another glorious day .

    7. A very happy anniversary to you and your wife Rastus. May you have many more.

    11. I've never missed our wedding anniversary – either of them. The Warqueen has, but being honest, when I wake up I expect her to fade away like smoke.

    12. RoughCommon here, Richard, you know me by email. I'm typing in a corner of my Dining Room, surrounded by lots of big photos of my dear late wife and me, taken during our happiest times. We met in 1960 and married on 19th April 1965, almost as late as it is possible for Easter Monday to be (except for 2025!). So it would have been 60 years of marriage and 65 years of companionship.
      Treasure it, sir…

      1. I do.

        I was forty when I met my beloved and she was 24. At the reception after the service I quoted in my speech:

        At seventeen he falls in love quite madly
        With eyes of tender blue
        At twenty-four he gets it rather badly
        With eyes of a different hue
        At thirty-five
        You'll find him flirting sadly
        With two or three or more
        When he fancies he is past love
        It is then he meets his last love
        And he loves her
        As he′s never loved before.

        1. Absolutely – and that man had a very lucky escape. These people pull the mental health card every time.

    1. How? How is that wangled , unless it's by just slapping the cost on expenses? If that's the route then they're all fiddling. Not just Labour.

  37. Minty’s Saga. Part 2.

    I thought that I would bring you all up to date with my medical travails. Now after Monday’s refusal I girded my loins and went down to the surgery on the Tuesday morning determined to do battle and see a doctor and get my prescription filled. Alas it was not to be. The surgery has gone online (today) and all appointments must be booked through it. I’ve just accessed it and oddly enough there is no actual means of booking an appointment. You can type in your symptoms I put in (Type 2 Diabetes) and it doesn’t recognise it. If you type in something acceptable you will be given an appointment. In other words you have no say at any stage. I must mull this over for a while. I shall probably be blind and dead before it is resolved.

      1. Signs of a heart attackchest pain, pressure, heaviness, tightness or squeezing across the chest
        Signs of a strokeface dropping on one side, cannot hold both arms up, difficulty speaking
        Severe difficulty breathingnot being able to get words out, choking or gasping
        Seizure (fit)shaking or jerking because of a fit, or unconscious (cannot be woken up)
        Severe injuriesafter a serious accident or assault
        Chokingon liquids or solids right now
        Sudden, rapid swellingof the eyes, lips, mouth, throat or tongue
        Sudden confusion (delirium)cannot be sure of your name or age
        Heavy bleedingspraying, pouring or enough blood to make a puddle
        Your life is in danger (suicide attempt)you have taken something or self-harmed, or may be about to do this.

        1. So whilst you are suffering from all these "acceptable" symptoms which preclude you from typing them in in order to get an appointment you are stuck. But if you phone and say, for example, that you have just attempted suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and/or slashed your wrists, they will then book you an appointment with your GP for a week on Friday. Aargh! (Good morning, btw, Minty.)

          1. Morning Elsie. Fortunately (depending on your point of view) I'm used to this sort of thing. I have always had to struggle against fate. I'm only putting this stuff up because we Nottler's are all of an age and it's useful info.

          2. Morning Elsie. Fortunately (depending on your point of view) I'm used to this sort of thing. I have always had to struggle against fate. I'm only putting this stuff up because we Nottler's are all of an age and it's useful info.

          3. <sarc>Post a twitter about pakistani paedophile child rapists and blame two tier kier for it. They'll send countless plod around to arrest you.</sarc>.

        3. Minty , please ring 111 , the NhS contact line NOW

          Then tell them everything .. they might refer you to a duty doctor elsewhere.

          Book a taxi , if the NHS suggest you need looking at ..

          Please do this .

          Also read my spiel about my dear friends husband .. happened too quickly .

        4. Sending hugs – you must be about to explode!

          How on earth is someone who can't be sure of their name ir age supposed to navigate perfectly through the system??

      2. Signs of a heart attackchest pain, pressure, heaviness, tightness or squeezing across the chest
        Signs of a strokeface dropping on one side, cannot hold both arms up, difficulty speaking
        Severe difficulty breathingnot being able to get words out, choking or gasping
        Seizure (fit)shaking or jerking because of a fit, or unconscious (cannot be woken up)
        Severe injuriesafter a serious accident or assault
        Chokingon liquids or solids right now
        Sudden, rapid swellingof the eyes, lips, mouth, throat or tongue
        Sudden confusion (delirium)cannot be sure of your name or age
        Heavy bleedingspraying, pouring or enough blood to make a puddle
        Your life is in danger (suicide attempt)you have taken something or self-harmed, or may be about to do this.

    2. Find another surgery. They can't all be that bad in your area. Mine is not exactly faultless but they are easy to contact by phone, in person, or computer.

      1. Find another surgery.

        Morning Johnathan. Easier said than done. Even if I could find one would they accept me? i have no personal transport. I'm going deaf so telephones are out. There is in fact a multitude of objections to it and that does not include personal malice and professional jealousy.

    3. The same with our surgery .

      My friends husband developed a poison toe , needed antibiotics and examining . He had had a quadruple heart buy pass a few years ago , was in his eighties , and the triage system now in operation was fiddly and time consuming .. told to attend surgery yesterday , but antibiotics were issued last Wednesday , by confirmation phone call by doctor, and told to pick the antibiotic prescription up from Chemist Wednesday late .. by 10am on Thursday .. he sat with his wife in the kitchen for coffee time .. about three minutes later he lolled and died immediately .. she couldn't do anything because she is disabled .. She dialled 999, all blues and twos turned up including air ambulance … very quickly , but poor man was long gone ..

      Tall fit ex RN , did everything for his wife ..

      Friday , poor friend was broken , totally, family arrived ..

      Saturday terrible Sunday even worse .. I went to the surgery first thing on Monday to request a call from the doctor especially as they were both elderly patients and she needed something to help her sleep and to numb her pain .

      I was put through the third degree as to why I was there pleading on her behalf ..

      The surgery said the Coroner had contacted them .. but no one thought to contact the widow ..

      I had a phone call yesterday from my friend thanking me but she was told the doctor would ring on Thursday .. and friend said to the receptionist , don't bother , you just don't care .

      My goodness , what on earth has happened to this country and the NHS Doctors ..

      They need to rebrief themselves on the meaning of the Hippocratic code .. Starting with firstly … DO NO HARM

      1. Our local GP surgery is first and foremost just a business. Some of the staff are still good though, so it's the luck of the draw who you speak to.

        1. All these complaints regarding their local NHS/surgery make me realise how lucky I am to have such a great surgery in my area where I can ring up anytime, speak to a lovely receptionist, ask for an appointment and get one the same day at a time to suit me if the space is available – I also get the choice of a telephone call or face to face. If a call then the doc will ring me at exactly the appointed time, if it's face to face I am seen at that time – rarely waiting.

          1. As it should be. However, much of Britain is now supersaturated with immigrants and medical services have not kept up to speed with the increased demand…

          5. But then you a) live in Scotland and b) inhabit an area that hasn't been enriched.

        2. All these complaints regarding their local NHS/surgery make me realise how lucky I am to have such a great surgery in my area where I can ring up anytime, speak to a lovely receptionist, ask for an appointment and get one the same day at a time to suit me if the space is available – I also get the choice of a telephone call or face to face. If a call then the doc will ring me at exactly the appointed time, if it's face to face I am seen at that time – rarely waiting.

      2. The GP surgeries seem to have gone downhill quite suddenly – I guess covid was the game-changer there. Our old GPs knew us as people, and not just numbers on a chart. Years ago we had a husband and wife team – they always knew us when we called. They are long gone – even though they divorced and she remarried they still worked together. He actually laid the foundation stone for the new surgery which is where we're still registered – he died shortly afterwards so never worked there. She retired many years ago too.

        They were followed by a doctor who wasn't everyone's cup of tea – but we liked him. In 2016 I had some kind of nasty stomach upset – he came out to see me at home – twice. He said it was my gall bladder – but I've never had anything like it since. He was the one who referred OH for his surgery for the shoulder tendon – private hospital but via NHS. He retired a few years ago too.

        I keep away these days and last saw a Dr for myself in 2019 when I had shingles. Fortunately I'm in good health.

        How is your poor friend coping now? Will she have to go into care or can she have care at home?

      3. The GP surgeries seem to have gone downhill quite suddenly – I guess covid was the game-changer there. Our old GPs knew us as people, and not just numbers on a chart. Years ago we had a husband and wife team – they always knew us when we called. They are long gone – even though they divorced and she remarried they still worked together. He actually laid the foundation stone for the new surgery which is where we're still registered – he died shortly afterwards so never worked there. She retired many years ago too.

        They were followed by a doctor who wasn't everyone's cup of tea – but we liked him. In 2016 I had some kind of nasty stomach upset – he came out to see me at home – twice. He said it was my gall bladder – but I've never had anything like it since. He was the one who referred OH for his surgery for the shoulder tendon – private hospital but via NHS. He retired a few years ago too.

        I keep away these days and last saw a Dr for myself in 2019 when I had shingles. Fortunately I'm in good health.

        How is your poor friend coping now? Will she have to go into care or can she have care at home?

    5. I haven't used our GP's online system (Anima) but it sounds very similar – you answer the online triage questions and then if you are lucky you can get an appointment. At least ours does still accept phone calls in the mornings.

    7. Given you history and the ' non-service' from the GP practice which you pay for via your taxes why don't drop Katie Morley at the Trelegraph a line I'm sure she would be delighted to take up the cudgels on your behalf….?

    8. Are they literally locked up, no one can enter type 'online'? Tell them your computer doesn't work and you can't book an appointment, so could they do it for you.

    9. It wouldn't recognize type 2 diabetes because that is not a symptom, it's a diagnosis. Type your symptoms and make it all sound as drastic as possible. Don't be restrained about, it be American not English.

    10. I got a response to my email re a disappearing referral. It was it was now out of their hands as it had been sent to an outside body and I need to chase it up direct. Not at all a happy bunny.

  38. SIR – British Steel is yet another example of how our industrial assets and heritage have been sold off to asset-strippers or dividend profiteers. When will this end?

    Robert Barlow
    Pulborough, West Sussex

    Hmm,

    Chinese metal … My pruning secateurs snapped , Moh bought what appeared to be a solid looking nail clipper , zilch, son has had screw drivers snap, many many items don't sustain wear and tear ..

    So what about aircraft , motor bikes , cars and spare parts , and even dare I suggest hip replacements .. how will Trumps tariffs affect the import of spare parts ?

    Hip replacement pieces, or joint implant devices, are manufactured by several companies, including Stryker Corporation, DePuy, Zimmer Holdings, Synthes, and Smith & Nephew, with locations in the US and UK.
    Here's a more detailed breakdown:
    Manufacturers:
    Stryker Corporation: (Kalamazoo, Michigan)
    DePuy: (Raynham, Massachusetts)
    Zimmer Holdings: (Warsaw, Indiana)
    Synthes: (West Chester, Pennsylvania)
    Smith & Nephew: (London, United Kingdom)

    1. Hallo Belle. It was deliberately brought by the Chinese in order to close it. They will continue to buy anything that is essential to the survival of this country then sell it or destroy it. This is the consequence of dealing with the enemy.

        1. Begging for them to buy more stuff and give us a sop while they ruin us. They have not forgiven us for the destruction of the Summer Palace during the Opium Wars, it is still an open wound to the Chinese, always in the back of their minds as they seek to humiliate us. But I must admit it was a barbaric act on our part.

      2. Yet it was bought because it made money. When energy became too expensive it was no longer profitable.

        If steel were still profitable the plant would remain open and making money with a host of backers. The Chinese saw an opportunity the Left created, stepped in and the rest is history. The same is true of Port Talbot. The failure is down to the destructive, socialist climate change act.

    2. There was a piece in the DT a couple of weeks ago about cobalt hip replacements and the trouble they cause.

    3. All intentional to run down this country. Deindustrialisation is the first weapon of the socialist.

      Destroy the jobs, keep people poor.

  39. Hallo all, Trust that you are all fine and that those who are not are at least managing to hold on to the bits that are falling off 😊. Sunny day, nice, forecast to reach 9c today. So a pleasant day but, emphysema and a high pollen count do not mix.

    According to the Telegraph, the dictator in Number 10 is scrambling around to try to get Trump to ease the tariffs I mistakenly thought came into effect today but it's tomorrow. I would love that Trump not only impose the tariffs but impose far more and demand that all restrictions on free speech be repealed by this odious government. If so severe it made the general apathetic public squeal, then good, they deserve it for letting it come to this. I honestly think that most people don't realize that restrictions on what we think and say are a prelude to us turning into a disgrace on the lines of those countries that were trapped behind the iron curtain. We would be silenced and terrorized until the advent of the Islamic state was imposed on us and our country finished.

  40. SIR – I’ve stopped putting water in my whisky.

    Brian Farmer
    Carmarthen

    I have never enjoyed putting water into a decent single-malt Scotch whisky.

    Strangely, though, I have only recently discovered the delight of Scotch-on-the-rocks. Ice melts slowly giving a muted diluted effect but not overwhelmingly so.

    1. Second Son introduced me to keeping the whisky in the fridge, just to knock some of the sharper edges off. It's rather good like that.

    2. Yo Mr G.

      You should never put water or ice into an 'expensive' malt Whisky, nless you know the provinence of that water.

      There are probably 2000+ diferrently tasting types of tap water available in UK, (and the same in Sweden)

      Bottled water of a knowm source is OK, if it has been used to make the ice

      Ideally, the water should come from the river/stream that was used to make the whisky ie the same flock sheep have been peeing in it

      I learnt this when travelling in Speyside, a haunt of whisky makers. The workers there had spin dryer at home, just for extracting the remains of batch of the stuff from the filters used

      PS Scotch is Whisky, Irish is Whiskey

      1. Yo Mr Effort.

        Whisky (the real stuff) is Scotch, and Whiskey (the pretend stuff) is from anywhere else.

        I have decent, clean tap water but I invariably filter it before use (in the kettle or the espresso machine). As I said I don’t put water of any kind in my whisky but I do put a few filtered-water ice-cubes in it.
        In any case I have invariably drunk the Scotch before the ice cubes fully melt.🥃👍🏻

        1. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the volume of Scotch, Whiskey, Bourbon – or whatever – that has passed my lips in my lifetime is exceeded by the volume of the same which has evaporated before reaching yours. As for other spirits, I've hardly ever touched gin or vodka and I rarely drink rum or brandy.

          2. "… which has evaporated before reaching yours."

            Known, in the distilling trade, as "The Angel's Share."

          4. Not one of my favourite ales. Too bland for my palate. Known as Gloom Bar in some quarters.

      2. Hence the old American thing of "bourbon and branchwater", i.e. water from the local stream.

  41. I have just mended the big office stapler (by taking it to a colleague who i know has an engineering degree and making him do it).

    But hey, i used my initiative.

    In other news, i am listening to a back episode of Pick of the Pops, from 1978. Back then i was about 11 and i hated “Baker St” by Gerry Rafferty. Now i can’t play it enough. Funny how you change.

      1. Phil Kenzie played the alto sax on that recording.

        Phil Kenzie is an English multi-saxophone player and rock and roll musician. He has been voted by fans as "one of the greatest rock 'n' roll sax players of all time."

        Born in Liverpool, Kenzie's first band was Derry Wilkie and The Pressmen. The band sometimes shared billing with The Beatles.

        Kenzie has either toured or recorded with The Beatles, Eagles, Graham Nash, Carly Simon, David Crosby, Black Sabbath, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, Alan Parsons, Al Stewart, David Essex, Leo Sayer, Wishbone Ash, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, Annie Lennox, The Pointer Sisters, The Coasters, The Temptations, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Eric Carmen, America, Vince Gill, and Debbie Gibson, among others.

        The Beatles used Kenzie on their album Let It Be, and he also played the blistering sax solo for Eagles' track "The Long Run" from the Eagles Live album.

        Kenzie's sax is featured on the Al Stewart hit record "Year of the Cat", creating the dénouement for the instrumental break, as well as on Stewart's "Time Passages" and "Song on the Radio".

        As a session player, Kenzie worked on Roger Daltrey's albums Ride a Rock Horse and One of the Boys, and Paul McCartney's Band on the Run. He also worked on both the live show and the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He also played on the sessions for Poco's album Legend, in particular on their song "Heart of the Night". The arrangement to work with Poco was thanks to the band having hired Steve Chapman and Charlie Harrison (two previous Al Stewart musicians). Chapman later left Poco and became Stewart's manager.

        In all, Kenzie has played on nineteen albums that have been certified gold or platinum.

        In January 2015, Kenzie released a new CD and kicked off his S.O.S.S. (Save Our Sax Solo) tour on the 15th at Jazziz Nightlife in Boca Raton, Florida.

      1. I borrowed an Elvis LP back in the 60s. Some of the original 1950s hits – unfortunately I had to give it back.

    4. Having an engineering degree doesn't mean you are any good at practical work – I know a guy withan M.Sc in engineering who can't fit a plug

      2. I trust my friend. He and I are about the only ones in our office who voted Brexit (or at least who will admit to voting Brexit, as if an admission is required). Plus he knows how to fly a plane.

        my boss did an electrical engineering degree and freely admits he is practically useless (in all semses).

        All three of us are Chartered Accountants. Make of that what you will.

        1. In my year at university more than half of the engineering graduates went into accountancy…

        2. Good with numbers? You don't need an engineering degree to fly an aeroplane. I KNOW how to fly an aircraft, I just don't have a PPL 🙂

    6. Couldn't stand REO Speedwagon as a kid. Play it all the time now.

      The Warqueen likes Van Halen. In fact. it's all her fault.

    7. I am extremely impressed that someone with an engineering degree could actually do something practical like fix a stapler!

  42. Stocks, Shares and ISAs
    I have just read an article by Mike Warburton in The Telegraph entitled: The little-known way to invest without being stung by capital gains tax
    Very interesting, but at the end it has a box which includes this statement:
    Labour’s capital gains raid
    Rachel Reeves has dramatically increased the tax rate charged on the sale of shares and other valuable assets. Find out when it kicks in and how much you'll pay. One business owner says selling up helped him avoid a £1m bill.
    Hang on, isn't Ms Thieves pushing all of us Cash ISA holders to invest in 'riskier' Stocks & Shares ISAs instead of 'safe, pedestrian' Cash ISAs?
    Bit of a brain-disconnect there. It was likely disconnected at birth.

    1. Al the “gains” are just inflation, since Brown abolished indexation allowance. Anyone holding assets long-term needs to put them in a tax-wrappe, if they can.

      1. When big government can just take what it wants, change the rules on a whim, wipe out the value of our savings with inflation the problem isn't where we store our money, it's the state's ability to take it from us.

  43. Stocks, Shares and ISAs
    I have just read an article by Mike Warburton in The Telegraph entitled: The little-known way to invest without being stung by capital gains tax
    Very interesting, but at the end it has a box which includes this statement:
    Labour’s capital gains raid
    Rachel Reeves has dramatically increased the tax rate charged on the sale of shares and other valuable assets. Find out when it kicks in and how much you'll pay. One business owner says selling up helped him avoid a £1m bill.
    Hang on, isn't Ms Thieves pushing all of us Cash ISA holders to invest in 'riskier' Stocks & Shares ISAs instead of 'safe, pedestrian' Cash ISAs?
    Bit of a brain-disconnect there. It was likely disconnected at birth.

  44. Cloudless sky 9 ° C
    Better luck with Wordle than the Lotto:
    Wordle 1,383 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Most violent youth crime is committed by blacks. It is incredibly rare – infinitesimally so for a white boy to stab someone. More, a white boy with two parents? Practically unheard of.

      Oh, they get into the stats, but as the stabbed protecting girls, not the stabber.

      Now, the demographic that does commit this crime is the blacks. Even more typical in the stats is that these blacks will have no father figure. Why? Because it more lucrative to live on welfare than marry.

      Social media isn't the problem. Absentee black fathers are, welfare is. As the state is responsible for both these problems, the simple truth is – Starmer is just looking for a reason to control social media while denying the utter, complete failure of the state.

  46. Top BTL comment on Alison Pearson's article

    Gary Limericker

    There once was a PM called Keir
    Who treated us all in two tiers
    If you're white, straight or male
    You go straight to jail
    But go free if you practice Sharia

    Allison Pearson
    The White House is right: freedom of speech is under threat in Britain like never before
    Every day there is another betrayal of our wartime generation and the values for which they fought

    Gift this article free
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/04/01/starmers-britain-trump-free-speech/

  47. Labour Tax Hikes Closing More Nurseries Than Phillipson Is Set to Open

    Phillipson is making a lot this morning of Labour opening “the first 300 of the new school-based nurseries we promised” in September. Cue heartwarming video of Bridget at play in one…

    Guido did a bit of sandpit maths here. The DfE is opening up £15 million for schools to fund 300 new or expanded nurseries across England. Post-budget research from The Early Years Alliance surveyed 1,000 “settings” on cost pressures, especially resulting from Reeves’ NICs hike. Budget changes were found to result in extra costs “averaging over £18,600 per setting, per year.” 95% said they were increasing fees and 40% of nurseries said they would were “likely to close their entire setting permanently.“ Quick maths: 40% of 1,000…

    So 100 more nurseries are closing from Labour’s policies than are opening this year. Will anyone think of the children…

    2 April 2025 @ 10:04

    ***********************************************

    Rufus Onslatt
    49m
    The wretched, out of her depth, Ms Philipson; would actually be over promoted if she was serving breakfast buns at Greggs.

    fred finger
    Rufus Onslatt
    38m
    When your head if full of Marxist ideology, there is no room left for common sense.

    keith waites
    Rufus Onslatt
    47m
    She's certainly a sausage roll short of a pack

    1. "Labour Tax Hikes Closing More Nurseries Than Phillipson Is Set to Open."

      Where the hell do they expect us to get our Alyssum seeds, Chrysanth cuttings, Tulip bulbs, Anemone corms, bedding plants, onion sets and seed potatoes from?😉

    3. By all accounts he was a difficult man to work with. It's genuinely sad that Cruise shot to stardom precisely because he gained a reputation for being easy to work with and utterly professional.

      The time he (Cruise) lost his cool on a mission impossible set was because he'd said put your masks on three times and not only was it costing him £1m a day to pay everyone but they only had a short window for the filming, thanks to covid hysteria.

      I think Kilmer had an ego bigger than his ability could pay for.

  49. Guardianista Monbiot Parrots False Claim Farmers Protests “Delayed Ambulances”
     https://youtu.be/W9WCH7-_n78
    Guardianista eco-warrior George Monbiot was out defending Just Stop Oil with typical zeal on Politics Live this morning. When it was pointed out that the group probably had to hang up their hi-vis after public support ran out of steam following their vandalising and road blocking, Monbiot argued that this is what protesters are supposed to do. He then pivoted to slam people for not attacking the farmers’ protests in December, which he said “blocked the roads in London… delaying multiple ambulances…ambulances were stacked up.” Not true…

    Guido Verify suspects Monbiot may have been referencing a report from fellow left-wing outlet Byline Times, which falsely stated that the farmers’ protests in December caused ambulance delays. As Guido pointed out two months ago, an FOI request to the London Ambulance Service revealed no recorded incidents of delays attributed to the farmers’ tractor protests. Not the first time Monbiot’s got it wrong…

    April 2 2025 @ 12:50

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e72c05bf115fc6ec080e53dd033db484d7398c4b144984c9397f8e45dc30dab.png

    3. Could point out to Monbiot that he's a hypocrite. Why did he disapprove of one and not the other?

      1. In his head, there is no hypocrisy. JSO = good, producing food = bad for the planet.

    5. Countryfile, 9th July 2023

      Moonbat: "What we're looking at here is one of the most damaging industries on Earth, the keeping of ruminant livestock, cattle and sheep. They're extremely damaging for several reasons, and only one of those reasons is methane. They also produce nitrous oxide, which is another powerful greenhouse gas. But far greater than those impacts is their ecological and carbon opportunity costs i.e. the cost of what you're not doing because those cattle and sheep are grazing on your land. In the short term, they could be wild ecosystems, which store more carbon than the grazing systems currently in use."

      He then spoke of the worth of renewable energy before disappearing off the edge of reality by declaring livestock farming to be morally wrong.

      1. Can we crowd fund a sniper?

        DeerMonbiots are pests. They need to be shot in the head

        1. I was thinking that about all the corrupt judges the other day. What they really need is a bullet to the head but if it were possible to do that to them, their supporters would be able to do it to us. A structure that prevents them gaining power in the first place is preferable but a shoot out might need to come first and here we were, thinking our civilisation had gone through that phase long ago.

      2. As I read elsewhere "Monbiot attended Stowe and Oxford but has yet to be educated."

        1. Stowe has always been known as the last resort for our (unplaceable elsewhere) cream – the rich, white and very thick (don't worry ,dahling, you can always send him to Stowe)

  50. SIR – We in Britain should look at how rubbish collection is done in Australia (“Bin strike council begs No10 for help”, April 1).

    In Melbourne, regular collections are made by a single driver, who doesn’t even leave the wagon. Bins lined up on the roadside are lifted by a hydraulic arm and tipped into a side opening, before being replaced. The truck then goes to the next property. In apartment blocks, a row of 20 bins line the road, to be emptied and replaced in minutes.

    Rod Beardsell
    Nantwich, Cheshire

    Here in Sweden it is the responsibilty of the homeowner to wheel out their bins to the pavement. Our dustbin lorries (that very term ages me) are also single-crewed (often by a lone female!) and they leave alight from the lorry's cab to empty the bins before leaving them where they find them.

    1. I have a lady bin driver/emptier.

      They don't get paid much though. I looked with the Birmingham bin strike. They get about £26,000. Which ain't much.

      1. Tell you something for free – getting twice that isn't much either. All our bills went up 10% this month. Our pay can't magically increase to match it. We have to earn it. So we have all had a pay cut thanks to the state.

        Tell me, why should public sector employees magically be given more money when they do so little to earn such?

        1. Magnify that problem by being on a fixed income (a pension) where you can't earn extra.

    2. Same here, we are expected to put our garbage (sorry, American term) bags out beside the road before 7AM on collection day.
      Weekly collections, they only miss out on holidays but will have a make up run on Saturdays if needed.

      2. If we have holidays (Christmas, Easter, Mayday etc) the collections are moved around. Depending on when your normal day is, the collection will be either earlier or later. Cue lots of people putting their bins out on the wrong day.

    3. Lived in the US now for 45+ years. Always had private contractors – not the council – dealing with bins, though I believe the cities use a single contractor to minimize traffic congestion, so only one truck in any area. Never had a problem with "bin men".There are always alternate contractors, so if one does not do the job, we can just change. Even here in a pretty rural are, we have a choice. Trucks manned by two people – one driving, one on the rear "platform" who hops off and deals with the bin and anything else I put out – up to 6 big trash bags worth, no sorting required. They come every week – when we lived in the 'burbs, they came twice a week. Also free "large item" pickup as long as it's been called in ahead of time. Holidays push everything back a day, so our pickup becomes early Saturday and not our normal early Friday.

      1. We have fortnightly collections (a team of 3 binmen including the driver), but they are from a firm contracted to the council. One week recycling, one week general rubbish. Disposal of any large items has to be requested and you will be charged. Fly tipping is rife – I wonder why!

    1. Yes. But Birmingham Council is bankrupt because a dinner ladies’ work was deemed to be “of equal value” to that of a binman.
      How did that work put for you, judge? Is it still your view that if dinner ladies didn’t dish out dinner it would be as catastrophic as the bin men not removing rubbish?

      1. In my opinion dinner ladies or binpersons don't get paid enough. Why should anyone have to work three jobs to survive and then pay tax on the pittance they get from these jobs. Been there.

        1. A check of the staff in city hall could be productive.
          As in booting out at least 50%.

          1. Birmingham City Council owns an art collection valued at almost £451 million, comprising 1,430 paintings, 560 sculptures, and 25,924 works on paper…

        2. Totally get that argument and always polite to the guy who cleans the toilets at work but taken to it's logical conclusion, insects are necessary to the ecosystems. However that doesn't actually put the hospital porter on a par with the surgeon. There has to be a value judgement.

          1. Birmingham City Council owns an art collection valued at almost £451 million, comprising 1,430 paintings, 560 sculptures, and 25,924 works on paper

        1. You have beautiful grandchildren. You have to find a way to save them from all this nonsense.

          5. Thank you for that, Phizzee! I’m biased, of course, but they are gorgeous!

    2. Keir Starmer: "I get it, you're angry. So am I. That's why I'm rolling up my sleeves to fix it."

      1. Yes, but what he's fixing is our response to getting angry. He is using state force to silence those who dissent from his insane ideology.

  55. Just finished cutting the grass for the second time this year, in blistering heat – now supping a cool Guinness

    1. It is jolly windy out there though. Quite good for drying the clothes though, as the sun evaporates the water and the wind blasts it away.

      Although running around after her knickers has raised the eyebrows.

      1. The glasses. The WHITE boy in the telly show didn't wear them. I claim £5.

  57. Wordle No. 1,383 3/6

    🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
    🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 2 Apr 2025

    Damned Birdie Three?

      3. Well done – not quite so inspired here
        Wordle 1,383 4/6

        ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
        ⬜🟨🟨🟨🟩
        🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Well I was certainly Damned today – I'm sure that if there had been any other options I would have chosen them. Buggering Bogey!!!

      Wordle 1,383 5/6

      ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
      🟨⬜🟨🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. No need to swear, GGGG, it took me six goes to get the solution. Is that a Par, Ma, Eagle, Birdie, Whatsit, or What?

        2. That made me laugh, Elsie, but I cant promise I wont swear again – not after that f*****g b********g b*******g result!!

    3. Five today.

      Wordle 1,383 5/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
      🟨⬜🟨⬜🟩
      ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      2. An improvement on recent wordles.
        Wordle 1,383 3/6

        🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
        🟩⬜⬜🟨🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    5. Well done. Just back from leafleting. Par today.

      Wordle 1,383 4/6

      ⬜🟨⬜🟩🟩
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. As Kipling did not write :

      East is West and West is East and ever the twain shall meet.

    6. If she's a star gazer it's correct. Just lie on your back with your head northwards.

          3. God, who was what He is and is what He was and will be for evermore – or words to that effect.

          7. In the adjacent universe you put 5 exclamation marks at the end of your comment. Otherwise that adjacent universe is exactly the same as this one.

          12. Was that THGTTG? Could never get on with the books. The current wife loved the radio shows though.

          13. No – Grok AI….but it turns out the answer is a lot more than 42…. (see below)

    7. I could easily have drawn that. I never get left and right confused but east and west bemuse me constantly!

      1. But are you ok with your narf n sarf, Grizz…I can only tell E/W/S by position of sun, especially if walking in woodland.

        1. Narf is brains and brawn. Sarf is poofs and warm shandy. No confusion there, Katy!😊

      2. As our vicar (she used to work in Wolverhampton) said, it's Never Ever Support Wolves 🙂

  61. Waltzes in, good evening, another beautifully sunny day .

  62. 1700 jobs to be lost in the Met Police.
    Funding from the mayor and the government slashed.
    kahnt blaming the previous government. Both practiced wreckers.
    What are these morons upto ?

    1. The Prelude to the introduction of Sharia. I understand that in certain countries in the Middle East there are street sellers of Gold. No one dare steal because of the consequences…..

  64. Just back from Wivno. Golly – I can see Mrs Allan moans about the roads in Colchester. We only had to cope with two roundabouts-where-you-can-go-either-way-round….And the locals (Mrs A excluded) who drive at 15 miles an hour…

    One cat missing on our return. Wandered round garden calling him., Not a sniff. Pickles appeared anxious.

    After half an hour, Gus sauntered in – without a greeting – and had his tea. Cats, eh?

    I am signing off – bloody knackered after the driving.

    A demain. If I live through the night.

    PS I gather I have missed the sale of the century.

    1. Colchester had ridiculous roundabouts when I lived in Essex in the '70's. I assume it's only got worse.

        1. And now out of the blue there’s is a new mission by the government/police to monitor ‘drink driving’. How have they suddenly arrived at the conclusion that it has increased? Suddenly been mentioned on the news. Unless there are more immigrants driving under the influence. Our youngsters could hardly afford it. At 5 pounds a pint. But it’s not really been recorded or registered. Just seemingly an assumption. But along with hundreds of public houses being closed down and the increasing islamic population. Its not impossible to imagine what this ‘king government is trying to achieve.
          Possible not just the driving being investigated but more than likely the amount of alcohol being consumed.
          Which of course the government’s islamic advisory service are on top of.
          Availability. Another con.

        2. At question time he never refers to the question asked he just bat's on with what he wants to say. Never what people want to hear, plain and simple answers as in the truth.

  66. President Javier Milei said: "The fight will not cease until our flag flies over the Islands".
    Argentina's unwavering claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, and the surrounding maritime areas.

    Firstly, don't they have a bogus name for South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands. A bit of a giveaway.
    Anyhow, just put in a claim online.. and Lord Hermer will make you an offer.

    1. They claim that the main island is called Las Malvinas and not The Falklands, but we claim that we landed in San Carlos Bay. Tit for tat, eh?

      1. The French call them Les Malouines – from St Malo. Maybe the Bretons have a better claim than Milei.

    2. That is one thing that might be used to draw Britain into the planned world war.
      China backs Argentina apparently.

    1. No such thing as British law, so it can't be restored… there's Scottish law and the law of England and Wales. Not sure wehere Norn Iron sits in this.

      1. There is, however, common law (since the 12th century). That would be a good start.

          1. I dont really know what common sense is. It seems to be whatever people who are like me happen to have. Those I disagree with don't have it.

  69. I just found the website where one can apply for an ETA (effectively, a visa) to travel to the UK.
    Clicking on the link ( https://homeoffice.queue-it.net/?c=homeoffice&e=eta1&ver=v3-javascript-3.6.3&cver=18&man=prod-eta&t=https%3A%2F%2Fapply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk%2Fapply%2Felectronic-travel-authorisation ) the first screen advised me there is a 4 minute wait TO BEGIN THE APPLICATION! Good thing the same person didn't code for Google… how useless can it be, you have to queue to start to use a website…

    1. The queue was to be told to download their app! Fucking hell, what shite.

      2. The only consolation is that the CBDC will presumably also be a Gubmint IT project and therefore won't work.

    3. We were told we had to register with the US immigration people if there for more than thirty days but their online portal is not yet working so technically we were illegal aliens. Considering the INS overreach on entry, that was not a comfortable feeling.

  70. My daughter wants to climb Snowdon so i am doing some research (i have done it several times but the last was was ovef 20 years ago).

    It’s like being in South Africa (where all the place-names have been changed).

    I am invited to climb Yr Wyddfa. Wtf? Fine, if you are Welsh. Go for it. Call it what you want on the Welsh-language version of your website. But i have no idea how to pronounce this – there’s no attempt to teach me – and all that’s happened is that i have become alienated and i feel excluded.

    i was under the impression that making people feel excluded was illegal. And yet here it is, in Wales.

    And i have to deal with a place called Eryri too.

    i am so utterly fed up with everything.

    1. Wales is all about excluding the Saesneg. When they talk about "the Nation" it isn't Great Britain or the UK they mean. I spent three years at a Welsh university; I had my degree conferred on me without having a clue what was happening. We were told (in English) to stand up, a whole load of Welsh was gabbled and then, after we'd been told to sit down, we were finally informed we'd just had our degree conferred on us.

      1. Hi Conners.
        My paternal Uncle Joe, born and bred in Carlisle, spent most of his adult life in Wales.

        He was Clerk of Works at RAF Valley, and very involved in Rhosneigr Golf Club.

        I have reason to believe that I was conceived while my parents holidayed in the vicinity of Spotter's Rock*. I dare say it was quieter in July 1956.

        Arriving unannouced at Joe's home (for the first time ever) for hus funeral, I was made very welcome by my three cousins, who introduced me to the pastor. In Welsh, and translated his reply. For all I know, he may have said in Welsh, "Fuck off, you English c*nt" – I know that Joe, whilst being a fluent Welsh speaker, had an English accent as far as the locals were concerned, and he would – e.g. in the Post Office queue – hear disparaging comments about him among the locals.

        On departure, he would bid them a fond farewell, in perfect Welsh…

        So to the funeral, which was conducted by said Pastor partly in in Welsh…

        And partly in perfect Engliah. WTF?

        *When Dianne The Ex's eldest son Ben was training at Valley, we went to Spotter's Rock to see him fly past. Unfortunately, for operatioal reasons. he walked , and joined us on the Rock…

    2. Is Wales a genuine nation, or is it merely an impoverished region of Britain?
      All this talk of Welsh people and Welsh culture, is it simply a tactful way of flattering an unremarkable subset of the Anglo-Saxon population?

      1. Well, it's certainly impoverished; it keeps electing a Labour government. It's a Principality and the Welsh work really hard to promote their culture, which leads me to suspect (and remember, my Grandfather was Welsh) that they feel a bit insecure.

      2. If a people have a language, it makes them distinct. Their Celtic roots have survived Anglo-Saxon domination. More to the point, is Belgium a genuine nation or, come to that, Switzerland? Their populations think so. That's good enough for me.

    3. I have no inclination to climb Snowdon so I'm not much fussed what it's called.

  71. A video blogger has commented on. POTUS's inclined standing position when recently meeting California's governor.
    An AI query revealed the following:

    AI Overview

    In some cases of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), individuals may experience posture problems, including a tendency to lean forward, which can be associated with certain types of FTD like corticobasal syndrome or progressive supranuclear palsy.

    The blogger suspected a case of FTD:

    https://dementech.com/2022/11/10/what-are-the-7-stages-of-frontotemporal-dementia/

      1. I didn’t know that he was actually a medical condition.
        He must have been officially self diagnosed being a Medical Donald.

    2. Apparently, yelling at people for no good reason, and throwing things are also symptoms of Alzheimer's. DJT is known for both.

      Plus, an illogical desire to invade friendly foreign countries…

  72. Evening, all. Sunny but bitterly cold here. Any outside activity required a coat and hat.

    The decline of British industry – not just steel making – is a disaster for the economy. It leaves us vulnerable to any shock that affects imports.

    1. Not to mention adverse balance of payments and the impact that has on the value of Sterling….

      1. Ah, the balance of payments – it's been a LONG time since that little economic gem got a mention.

        1. I've never forgotten its importance – but what do I know I've only got a humble BSc (Econ) degree. It will come back one day when it has bitten us on the bum. The fact that it appears today to be of no importance is because all those ££££s we spend on foreign trinkets are accumulated and then used to buy back industries, lands and estates (and possibly politicians….)

          1. Back in Maggie's day I remember Budgets mentioning such things as M0 and the money supply. Before the printing presses got started.

          2. There were a series of Ms (Different aspects of Money Supply). There was even an M in MI5!

    1. King Stephen, please enlighten me. Does this mean that Reform numbers are increasing or decreasing?

  74. From Coffee House the Spectator

    Two books I read in my teens made me want to be a writer. One, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, appeared when I was in the third year of secondary school and delivered a style of memoir so warm, so funny and affable that I wanted nothing more than to do the same. The other was Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a very tattered tenth-hand copy borrowed from a friend (and never given back, sorry). I was mesmerised.

    It was probable that I would have headed down the path to Grub Street anyway, but if you want to blame anyone for my contribution to the discourse, then Harper Lee must shoulder a small part. English wasn’t my favourite subject – that was history, followed by maths, and the profession I first saw myself trying out, after a careers fair in school, was as an actuary. Probability always interested me, perhaps because it feels like a tangible way of understanding a confusing world, and statistics are usually less frightening than one’s imagination. It’s a shame I didn’t stick with that idea, in retrospect.

    Harper Lee’s influence was enormous. There was a point during the early 2010s, when I used to read weekly theatre reviews, when I remember noticing that there were four different plays about racial prejudice in the American South showing in the West End. The book and its film adaptation had a huge impact on how audiences viewed racism and the law, and this is hardly surprising, since fictional works have far more influence on public opinion than dry polemic.

    Perhaps the most famous example was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped galvanise the anti-slavery movement in the northern United States, leading Abraham Lincoln to tell its author Harriet Beecher Stowe ‘So you’re the little woman that started this great war!’ (in fact that probably didn’t happen, but the story reflected a widespread understanding of the book’s influence).

    In Britain, public opinion on abortion was hugely influenced by Up The Junction, the radio play directed by Ken Loach, with its depiction of a back street termination. Loach was also responsible for Cathy Come Home, which influenced elite opinion on homelessness and probably played a part in the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act; this radically overhauled the social housing waiting list system by giving priority to those in need, with enormous consequences.

    Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and its film adaptation had a huge effect on perceptions about serious mental illness, promoting the R.D. Laing school of thought that the mentally ill were best placed in the community rather than institutions – again, with huge consequences.

    Fiction has often driven social reforms, none more so than the work of Charles Dickens, whose novels also continue to colour our view of Victorian Britain more than any historian. Drama as a means of shaping the discourse has also seen a revival with last year’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, and now with the arrival of the Netflix drama Adolescence.

    It is harrowing stuff, especially as a father of a boy just a bit younger than its antagonist, and Adolescence has proved a huge hit; watched by six and a half million people in its first week, the biggest ever audience for a streaming television show, it even beat The Apprentice in audience ratings. It is a credit to the writers and the actors, in particular the hugely talented Stephen Graham, who both co-wrote the drama and played the killer’s father with a rare degree of empathy.

    It is also a drama quite consciously aimed at driving the discourse, which Parliamentarians have taken up with zeal. The Prime Minister announced that: ‘As a father, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter hit home hard. We all need to be having these conversations more.’ Backing Netflix’s plan to show the series for free in schools across the country, ‘so as many young people as possible can see it’, Starmer even accidentally referred to it as a ‘documentary’ in parliament before correcting himself, and then did so a second time. Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, has been slammed by radio hosts for not watching the fictional work, one calling it a ‘dereliction of duty’. One gets the feeling that we’ll soon all be out clapping for Adolescence.

    So with the backing of the Prime Minister, the programme will be watched in parliament, where the show’s creators will meet with politicians to discuss ‘online safety’. The drama will also be shown in schools as part of anti-misogyny lessons; the message behind Adolescence, that the small, weird kid is probably a demented women-hating killer, will no doubt have a very positive impact on classrooms.

    You might say that ‘Britain has gone from Government-by-Newspaper-Columnist to Government-by-DocuDrama’ But, of course, there is a key difference between Mr Bates and Adolescence – the Horizon scandal portrayed in that ITV series actually happened; Adolescence is total fiction. In fact, not only did the story in the Netflix series not happen, it’s not even likely to happen, as any actuary might tell you. This has not stopped the BBC reporting how the‘Netflix hit proves necessity of male role models’.

    The drama recounts the story of Jamie, an intelligent 13-year-old boy from a loving and intact upper-working-class family. His father has never seen the inside of a police station before but Jamie, influenced by ‘that Andrew Tate shite’, as the female detective phrases it, and the beliefs of the online manosphere, murders a girl who calls him an ‘incel’.

    As Ian Leslie wrote:

    At the centre of the story is a boy who stabs a girl to death in a fit of rage, driven by fear of masculine humiliation. Jamie is intelligent, and while he has problems controlling his anger, he is not mentally ill. Jamie’s normality is crucial to what you might call the argument of Adolescence. We have seen dramas about children doing terrible things before and invariably it turns out that the children’s parents have done terrible things to them.

    Adolescence toys with this convention, leading us to expect a shocking revelation of parental abuse. The only shock turns out to be that Jamie’s parents are decent and loving. They are not the problem; the problem is in the phones. Jamie’s mind has been poisoned by the online “manosphere” (a concept clumsily introduced in a scene between the lead detective and his son). This online culture is to blame, rather than parents, teachers, or the kid himself. The manosphere performs a role that we used to assign to evil spirits, arbitrarily taking possession of vulnerable souls and acting through them to commit awful deeds.

    Jack Thorne, the show’s writer, said that Jamie ‘comes from a good background, like me; he’s a bright boy, like I was. The key difference between us? He had the internet to read at night whereas I had Terry Pratchett and Judy Blume.’

    As Leslie points out:

    Your beloved son could be the next Jamie, the story tells us. This is a terrifying and riveting thought. It is also, let’s be clear, quite mad. I don’t believe for a moment that if Jack Thorne had had access to Andrew Tate videos he would have turned into a rage-fuelled murderer, and in general there is no empirical support for such a proposition.

    It is because the show is targeted at concerned parents that the killer is so improbable in every way. Small and sensitive, his best subject at school is history and his favourite character Brunel, as is so often the case with teenage killers; honestly, I’ve almost lost count of the number of times Isambard Kingdom Brunel is cited by knife attackers in crime reports.

    He’s a child we can worry about. But, from a probability angle, he is wildly unlikely to commit a crime, and looks far more like the type of boy who comes home holding back tears because he’s been mugged rather than one who lashes out violently; indeed young men are the most likely of any demographic to be victims of violent crime.

    That is not coincidental. Conor Fitzgerald observed that ‘to the limited extent that such crimes ever even happen, the perpetrator is usually Jamie’s total opposite. Stephen Graham (the show’s lead actor and creator) has cited a number of stabbings as the inspiration for the show’ and all have a sort of pattern: ‘the deprived background, the premeditation, the history of violence and explicit signs he was willing to harm women.’ In none of these cases was the ‘manosphere’ a factor.

    Being a father is a tough job, and there are your salt-of-the-earth working-class men like those portrayed by Graham whose sons end up lawbreakers; but as any actuary will tell you, the odds are heavily in their favour that their children will turn out just fine. The old ‘straight-and-narrow’ guidelines of the past were precisely aimed at placing probability on your side: learn a trade, stay off drugs, avoid the company of petty criminals and don’t get a girl ‘in trouble’ before you’re ready to commit. Follow these basic rules, and you’ll likely avoid poverty or prison.

    Adolescence is aimed at a modern liberal audience who consciously reject those old values, yet who are also subconsciously quite conservative, indeed reactionary in many ways. The picture it paints of modern youth is bleaker than even the darkest corners of my conservative imagination. ‘These kids are impossible – what am I supposed to do?’, the bedraggled teacher complains, while the year head talks of metal detectors in school and is told to ‘shut up, miss’ after telling a boy to put away his phone. The school stinks of ‘vomit, cabbage and masturbation’, while DI Bascombe suggests that ‘Does it look like anyone’s learning anything to you? It just looks like a fucking holding pen…’ (well, I have a solution to that).

    The most implausible scene comes when the detectives tell a classroom about the murder, which the boys all treat with levity, when in reality I suspect that many would be in tears. This is a worldview in which young males are barbarians and a problem for society to deal with, while in contrast the agents of the state are all portrayed sympathetically. The strong, brooding black policeman who’s a devoted father; his gobby but smart female northern sidekick; the saintly black immigrant mental health worker (a trope that owes a lot to Harper Lee); the tough but sensitive female psychologist who asks the killer ‘what do you think about women, Jamie?’

    In reality, one of the recurrent themes of the many recent tragedies which have darkened the mood of Britain, in particular the grooming gangs scandal, is how cruel the system is to ordinary people, how callous its agents. They weren’t doing what’s right; they were following the system and its ideological goals in a heartless way. This is a drama which doesn’t question the system, except to call on it to do more to fight counter-cultural and anti-social outside forces – the hallmarks of what progressives used to call ‘moral panic’.

    The picture it paints of modern youth is bleaker than even the darkest corners of my conservative imagination

    The reality is that there is not a huge societal danger about boys becoming dangerous from internet use. Teenagers are much less violent than their forebears in the 1990s; indeed the troubling thing about the youth of today is how passive they are, how withdrawn and nervous.

    The social problems Starmer wishes to confront do exist, just not in a way that makes audiences feel comfortable. In the week that Adolescence was being watched by millions, a school in Elm Park on the London/Essex border held a party which was overrun by knife-wielding teenagers. That was close to where a real teenage girl was murdered by two real teenage boys in 2019. You’ll notice that none of the perpetrators resemble the star of Adolescence, because teenage knife crime in Britain is predominately a problem with young black men. This is testified by the fact that, according to Graham, who both wrote as well as acted, the show was inspired by the fatal stabbing of Elianne Andam by Hassan Sentamu, as well as other real-life cases. These are unpalatable realities, and audiences for drama don’t like them.

    This is why actuaries could not write compelling dramas – the plots would be predictable and depressing, and make the audiences feel bad about themselves. Fiction writers, instead, have a tendency to portray implausible scenarios which give comfort to liberal audiences; in its school scene, Adolescence even features a white boy trying to mug a black boy for his lunch money which, as a teenager growing up in London, I can only say takes a willing suspension of disbelief.

    Even the baleful influence of Andrew Tate and ‘toxic misogyny’ is, again, disproportionately a problem among minorities, as Rakib Ehsan pointed out, and ‘there are several issues that may make young black men more likely to be drawn to Tate’s rantings’, the obvious one being fatherlessness: ‘Young black males are a group disproportionately impacted… This means young black men are the least likely group of young men to have a positive male role model living with them at home – a world away from Jamie’s nuclear family, as depicted in Adolescence, in which the boy is “radicalised” by online influencers.’

    Almost half of children in Britain reach the age of 14 without their biological father at home, but this rises to more than three-quarters for those who end up in custody. Indeed, Ashley Walters, who plays DI Bascombe, blames his own fatherlessness for his past behaviour. Social media and smart phones have downsides – I strongly suspect that they are making us stupider – but the obvious risk factor for young boys is fatherlessness.

    The problem with the political messaging behind Adolescence, its overt attempts to shape the discourse, is that it will spur lawmakers to miss the point once again. Like with the woeful Martyn’s Law introduced after the immigration mistakes that led to the Manchester bombing, or the Government’s attempt to blame Amazon for the state’s failures over Southport in which, unlike with Jamie, the authorities had plenty of warnings about the killer’s violent behaviour. There is indeed a problem at the moment with violence in schools, and a huge rise in pupils assaulting teachers. yet the current government has also declared its aim to reduce the number of pupils being excluded. Lawmakers are loath to address problems effectively precisely in part because they watch so much fiction and have come to look at the world in a semi-fictional way; their instinctive mental shortcut is to think of the hard cases, a key focus of scriptwriters, rather than raising the probability of positive outcomes. How many shows and films can you name about the wrongly accused or mistreated, sympathetic criminals, and how many about the people they victimise?

    If politicians wanted to deal with the real problems raised by Adolescence, they could wage a campaign of encouraging people to follow the ‘straight and narrow path’, and aligning tax and benefits incentives in its favour. That would be controversial, and disagreeable to consumers of fiction.

    Indeed, one of the biggest drivers of the increasing numbers of lone-parent families from the 1970s was the same Homeless Persons Act which prioritised single mothers in housing – one reason why the number of lone parent families went from 7 per cent in 1971 to 22 per cent in 1998. Similarly, many of the most horrific knife murders, such as those in Nottingham, were a result of the law making it harder to section the mentally ill – again downstream of fiction, and its portrayal of hard cases.

    None of our lawmakers can confront these issues because they are also averse to the idea that their own post-60s worldview might be to blame for what’s gone wrong with children. In episode 3, the psychologist is disturbed, and the audience is invited to be disturbed too, about a 13 year-old-boy discussing his desire to touch a woman sexually. That is indeed too young, but then one of the undercurrents behind the grooming gangs scandal was that agents of the state were enabling underage sex, a result of the Gillick competence; admitting that a Christian prude like Gillick was right about child sexualisation would be as painful as accepting that Mary Whitehouse was right about pornography, something many middle-class parents clearly believe, but feel it is too low status to admit.

    Instead they’ve found new moral evils to focus on in the form of the manosphere or online hate, and the agents of the state even sympathetically view Jamie as subject to forces outside of his control. Misogyny is part of the pyramid of harm, that strangely gormless worldview in which tiny infringements of social codes are linked to far more serious problems (edgy banter at work > > > something something > > > the Holocaust). The boy’s father doesn’t have female friends and sometimes loses his temper; his son murdered a girl. Can’t you see the link there, between behaviour typical of perhaps 50-90 per cent of men and one characteristic of 0.001 per cent?

    One reason that society now feels so uncomfortable with young men is because social norms have moved to a more feminine centre, focussed on empathy and harm-prevention, one major cause of the Great Awokening. It is a way of seeing the world, and of organising human relationships, which many males indeed find difficult to negotiate, but contrary to the fears about men suffering from smartphone use, the data shows that social media is disproportionately harming girls, ‘and is more likely to cause depression than radicalisation.’

    A society in which norms are more female-orientated is just as likely to worry about its children as the patriarchy of old, and the response to Adolescence clearly has the feel of moral panic, similar to those around video games and comic books. Jack Thorne, the show’s writer, has even called for teenagers to be banned from social media to ‘stop [the] pollution’ of misogyny online, while the government is clearly using the series to promote its Online Safety Act.

    As with so many instances where adults have a particular political goal, children have been called in to push the drive, with pupils supposedly calling for Adolescence to be shown ‘in schools to help pupils understand the dangers of social media, knife crime and toxic influencers.’ Teenagers are the most conformist section of the population, something well understood by authoritarian rulers of the past, but what many older liberals fear is a terror familiar to many societies – that they are losing their young men.

    As Fitzgerald correctly observed, this is the very reason why the ‘Jamie’ demographic is targeted. They ‘are not just troublesome because of the retrograde sexual attitudes they might have, or the threat they pose to women and girls. They are troublesome because they are aligned to the upward surge in exactly the kind of political activity that is most disruptive of the status quo. The post-Adolescence discussions being held in parliaments and on TV are best understood as an intensification of the ones around dis- and misinformation. The utility of this discussion for governments and activists everywhere is not that this will help get phones out of schools, but that it will give a second wind to these attempts to reign in inconvenient political speech on the internet.

    ‘Some groups are more in need of this kind of control than others. This is the heart of the matter; the idea of Adolescence as a call to action has been embraced because it presents a chance to interfere with and oversee the inner lives of the demographic that Progressives are worried about the most – quiet, smart young white men.’

    Indeed, what Adolescence really suggests is a society – especially a society of middle-aged, middle-class liberals – which worries not that their boys are growing up to be killers, but that they are growing up to reject their progressive values. In this, as with previous moral panics, their fears are not totally unjustified.

    This article was originally published on Ed West’s Substack.

    Ed West
    WRITTEN BY
    Ed West
    Ed West writes the Wrong Side of History substack

      1. I read a synopsis some time ago; I thought it was harrowing. The author of the book appears periodically on TV in different talk shows. I can’t bear to watch her. Turn it off.

    5. Used to be said that an actuary was someone who found accountancy to be too exciting.

      1. I must confess I had never heard the word before maybe because I’ve spent the last 50 years in Spain. However I do remember as a young man being offered a position in a London insurance office as an Average Calculator, trainee of course. I think this was the same profession, the most attractive part was that almost certainly I would be sent abroad, possibly the Philippines.
        But the starting salary was low for Central London and I went to another company. How different my life may have been.

        1. I think Dickens might have mentioned it (the word "actuary"). Or was it someone else?

        2. FIFTY years in Espana! Were you already there in 1975 when Franco died? (that night the bars & bodegas ran out of cava/champan)

          1. Yes,had a week’s holiday when the school where I was working closed for mourning. Bars and restaurants were open of course. I went out with friends that night, TV on on in many bars people filing past the Caudillo’s coffin. I don’t remember anyone drinking champagne, people were worried especially older people about what the future would bring, if there would be another war. But in general it was a period of much hope and as time went on the perception was that things were going to get better.
            Of course the die hard fachas were pretty upset about losing influence, welcome to the New Spain they would cry when anything seemed to go wrong. The Spanish don’t know the difference between liberty and liberatinism. The usual standard.

      2. Our school year was the first to use a (primitive) computer for careers 'advice'. What it suggested for me was either 'actuary' or 'interior designer'. The poor teacher in charge of handing over the advice was flummoxed and thought I'd been telling porkies in answering the questions. Nope – I now recognise the first example of a lifelong tendency to fall between the cracks of machine logic. 🤣🤣

        I suspect I would have been in prison for some sort of mischief had I actually pursued a career as an actuary.

    6. I wish I hadn't read it. It posits a deceitful manipulation of truth but leaves a sense of helplessness about how to correct the misrepresentation or to challenge the true picture. Impotence is not a welcome feeling to inculcate in readers.

  75. From the Telegraph

    Putin is in real trouble now
    The US President, if disappointed, could be a dangerous beast

    02 April 2025 9:57am BST
    With increasing signs of Putin’s Russia dragging its feet on the US proposed ceasefire one wonders if this is a case of brinkmanship or deliberate folly. Having rejected Trump’s proposed 30-day ceasefire and making a frankly unattainable counter-offer, Putin has now set in motion the biggest call-up yet of Russian conscripts (and I would not put too much store in his promise that they will not be sent to Ukraine).

    While he’s still taking tough, things don’t look great on the military or economic fronts for Putin. On the battlefield the Russians have resorted to still more extreme cannon-fodder tactics with some thrusts being led, Mad Max style, in converted cars and trucks. Ukrainian attacks have struck airfields far into Russia destroying some very modern and expensive aircraft and air defence missile systems. Add to these the mysterious attacks in Moscow itself, including the destruction of a presidential limousine, and it is clear that either there is a capable Ukrainian sabotage and special-ops network in place or disgruntled Russians are now out to rid themselves of their President.

    Meanwhile Putin’s international allies remain present but increasingly preoccupied with their own problems. China’s focus is on Taiwan and its scuffles with the Philippines. Lukashenko is clinging to power in Belarus by his teeth, with his army fully committed to his personal defence since the stolen election of 2020 and his sham victory in January this year. The North Koreans have disappointed on the battlefield and an increasingly desperate Iranian regime is even talking of attacking the UK/US base in Diego Garcia as it faces a looming attack on its nuclear programme by Israel or the US or both.

    For the Ukrainians the omens looked bad after Zelensky’s disastrous Oval Office encounter in late February, but now there is the real possibility of Putin upsetting President Trump. This could mean increased indirect support to the Ukranians using what Republican Congressman Lyndsey Graham described as “bone crushing” sanctions. This could mean sanctions not just on Russia but penalties for anyone who trades with them.

    There could also be renewed arms shipments, including the missiles that are proving the most effective. HIMARS and ATACMs are always on the Ukrainian shopping list and they deliver fast results. A high-level Ukrainian source told me recently: “we have more targets than bullets, so to speak”. Targeted attacks on high-value assets in Russia – an S300 missile battery at $500m a copy, an S400 at $1bn a copy – seriously degrade Russia’s capability. If two or three such assets were destroyed each week, then by June, Russia would be begging for peace as its strategic reserve capability is eroded. With effective sanctions in place replacements could not be made at all, never mind in a timely fashion. Such a strategic setback for Russia would mean the voluntary redrawing of the front lines. But that means the munitions must be delivered, not as in the past at a rate enabling Ukraine to survive, but in quantities that give the Ukranians the edge to win.

    But this is now an option that may be taken by the White House. It is the likely consequence of frustrating President Trump and his declared resolve to end this war shortly after taking office. A disappointed President Trump is a very dangerous and unpredictable beast. Vladimir Putin would be wise to realise that.

  77. a propos of my post earlier, sod Wales. I am now planning a day up Kinder Scout followed by a day on the Shropshire Way (can’t make my mind up between Stage 2 (Bridges to Bishop’s Castle), 3 (Bishop’s Castle to Clun) or 4 (Clun to Craven Arms)). Am planning on staying in a great hotel I know in Wolverhampton!!!!

    1. The south of the county is very pleasant. Clun has a castle, but I don't think Bishop's Castle, despite its name, still has one. Is the "Bridges" in stage 2 actually Bridgnorth?

      1. No, Bridges is a place in its own right – near the Stiperstones (always a favourite).

        But. Clun. Who can resist it? Plus I get some more Offa’s Dyke on stage 3.

        But. Stage 4 still gives me Clun Castle, and some iron-age forts.

        Decisions, decisions!!!!

        Edit. Re the castle, I think you are correct, there isn’t one but mum tells me there’s a nice hotel there!!!! (Or, is it was a nice hotel there?)

        1. Funny; I've lived in Shropshire since 1974 and been to the Stiperstones, but I'd never heard of Bridges. The things you learn on Nottl!

    2. I don't think it fair to sod Wales entirely, although I understand the sentiment. Like rUK we humble inhabitants are saddled with a malign government that surely must soon fall (mustn't it???).

      What is the great hotel in Wolverhampton, please? Is it handy for the racecourse?

      1. There's no obvious mechanism to make it fall. We have a largely supine population and any attempt at insurrection by a small angry mob will be met with a lethal force sufficient to quell it.

      2. There is a hotel actually at the racecourse. Don't know what it's like to stay in, though.

  78. a propos of my post earlier, sod Wales. I am now planning a day up Kinder Scout followed by a day on the Shropshire Way (can’t make my mind up between Stage 2 (Bridges to Bishop’s Castle), 3 (Bishop’s Castle to Clun) or 4 (Clun to Craven Arms)). Am planning on staying in a great hotel I know in Wolverhampton!!!!

  79. a propos of my post earlier, sod Wales. I am now planning a day up Kinder Scout followed by a day on the Shropshire Way (can’t make my mind up between Stage 2 (Bridges to Bishop’s Castle), 3 (Bishop’s Castle to Clun) or 4 (Clun to Craven Arms)). Am planning on staying in a great hotel I know in Wolverhampton!!!!

  80. Well, chums, 11 pm (my bed time) approaches so I am off up the stairs to Bedfordshire. Good night to everyone, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

    1. Night night Elsie. Hope to see you bright of eye and bushy of tail manana (can't do the twiddly bit, sorry)

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